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India seen staying away from Sri Lanka's new troubles
(Reuters)
Updated: 2005-12-27 15:34

Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse arrives in India on Tuesday to seek New Delhi's support for Colombo's flagging peace bid with the Tamil Tigers, but he is unlikely to meet with much success, officials and analysts said.

Pressure from Indian Tamil groups in Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's coalition and past experience, when India badly burned its fingers trying to bring peace to its southern neighbour, would discourage Delhi from getting involved in the island's latest troubles, they said.

Rajapakse is due to hold talks with Singh, Indian President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam and Sonia Gandhi, chief of the ruling Congress party whose husband, former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, was assassinated by Tamil Tiger rebels in 1991.

Rajapakse's aides said the new president, on his first foreign visit, would brief them on the deteriorating security situation following a rash of deadly attacks against the military that have fuelled fears of a return to a two-decade old war.

On Tuesday, the Sri Lankan military said eight soldiers were feared dead in a mine attack on an army bus by suspected rebels.

"India is the main country, we have to get them involved in the peace process," Rajapakse said earlier this month. "With their blessings we can achieve (peace)."

He wants India to attend periodic talks held by the island's main donors, the United States, Japan, Norway and the European Union, who are key stakeholders in the peace process.

"They can at least join the other co-chairs," Rajapakse said. "The presence of an Indian representative at the December 19 meeting of the co-chairs in Brussels shows that they are taking more interest."

COSMETIC INTEREST?

India, which has had a long and complex involvement in Sri Lanka, has been a strong supporter of peace efforts to end the country's civil war, which has killed 64,000 people so far.

New Delhi is known to have first armed and trained the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in the mid 1980s but later sent peacekeeping troops to Tamil-held areas before becoming locked in open war with the rebels and was forced to pull out.

More than 1,000 Indian soldiers were killed during that effort. India declared the LTTE a terrorist outfit after the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi and has ever since kept away from the Sri Lankan conflict.

Instead, New Delhi has focused on building strong trade and economic links with the island nation, an approach that has improved relations between the two countries in recent years.

Analysts say India could exert pressure on the Tigers if it wanted to but the political leadership is reluctant, despite arguments from some intelligence agencies in favour of doing so.

Last week, a senior Indian Tamil leader, whose party is a member of the federal coalition, met Prime Minister Singh and urged him to continue with India's hands-off policy.

"India will basically not shift away from its policy of sitting on the fence," said Ashok Mehta, a retired Indian army major-general and an independent analyst.

"We can get the LTTE to be a little better behaved if we can garner the political will to do so. But the pressures of coalition politics are unlikely to allow this," said Mehta, who was a commander of Indian peacekeepers in Sri Lanka.

"So I think India will only show more cosmetic interest in what is happening there."



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